


The Road to Self-Discovery

by temporalDecay



Series: Tumblr Porn Prompt Fics [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftercare, Bloodplay, Bulges and Nooks, Gill Piercings, Gills, Horn Stimulation, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, M/M, Nook Eating, Size Difference, Size Kink, Tentabulges, piercings in places there shouldn't be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 04:49:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight snippets following the progression of Eridan and Karkat's relationship as they figure out the finer points of navigating each other's kinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road to Self-Discovery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anonymous @ tumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Anonymous+%40+tumblr).



> Got hit in tumblr by a particularly vicious and insistent anon with a giant hateboner for Eridan and anyone who didn't write them the way they wanted them to, so my obvious reaction was to take the mature high road of spaming them with porn whenever they vomited vitriol in my inbox. The first seven snippets started as that, the final eighth one is an answer to a porn prompt, also from tumblr:
> 
> "Prompt - distrait-verse eridan/karkat with eridan topping, preferably kar-pov (I have a really bad size kink and since that ask on trials and tribulations I haven't been able to stop thinking about it)" --Anonymous.

**I.**

He starts on your knee, which makes you jump because you expected him to dive in all at once. He certainly looks like he wants to. Instead he kisses your knee, then slides his mouth to the fleshy bit just before the dip between leg and thigh, and something inside you _giggles_. The giggle never makes it to your lips, though, as you sit there, hands clenched on the sides of the platform because you don’t know what you’ll do with them otherwise. 

He stays there a long time, just kissing and licking that little fleshy part that makes you giggle inside, and even if you never let out a sound, it still makes your body relax, bit by bit. You suppose that’s what he wanted, because he moves in a little higher, no more than half an inch, but your entire being seizes up because he’s technically kissing your inner thigh now. He stays there a while, though, and he does this thing with his tongue, half a lick, half a twirl, and it makes that thing inside you _squeal_ a bit. It’s different than the giggling, but it works the same way. That’s how he crawls his way up to your groin, with patience you didn’t know he had, waiting until giggling and squealing and gasping and moaning and _wanting_ has left you too willing to be tense. There’s a trail of spit down your thigh, and the air is cool enough it makes it twitch. 

You wonder why you’re thinking about your thigh the moment he finally lets his tongue slide right between your legs. You choke on a shrill sound, very nearly a shriek, as you slam your legs close, or try to. You end up curling around his head, fingers digging into his scalp and ankles crossed tightly at the nape of his neck. You don’t know what’s worse, though, the strange, electric feeling of his tongue against your skin, or the soft brush of his breath as he waits patiently for you to relax. Except you don’t _want_ to relax, not really. You’re scared and nervous, and it seems ridiculous, but you’ve never done something like this before. Sex with Sollux is something else entirely. This… this thing, this moment, breathing hard and trembling and holding on, while Eridan listens and waits, this is unthinkable in Sollux’s presence. It’s different and you always _knew_ sex between kismesis and matesprits was different, but this is just so… _different_. 

“Go on,” you say, voice low and hoarse, and you don’t let him go. 

You feel his tongue against your slit and you can feel his teeth, the flat, blunt front side of them, just barely brushing in places you can’t quite place without looking, and you kind of want to scream and cry and shove him away and pull him so far close he becomes part of you. 

You come before you can make up your mind, your bulge not even fully unsheathed, and that’s when you know he’s going to be the death of you, because he doesn’t stop. 

You writhe against the back of your chair, and he ignores the flood of genetic material as your muscles pump it out your nook, sucking on the tiny strip of skin between the edge of your nook and the base of your bulge, and it sends a constant pulse of warmth that drills itself somewhere deep inside you, behind your spasming seedflap. The world is melting all around you, dripping down in bright, vibrant colors, as you try desperately to gulp some air and keep yourself from passing out. You shriek in the back of your throat when he shoves a finger into you the moment the flow of genetic material slows. Then you feel his tongue along with his finger, teasing the oversensitized skin. You press your hands against your face, refusing to see what kind of mess you’ve made of him, spilling all over his face. His lips move away from your nook and the finger teasing there, instead concentrating on coaxing your bulge out. It shouldn’t be this easy, you think, not this soon after orgasm. But Eridan’s mouth feels obscenely good and he’s curling his tongue against the tip of your bulge before you can fully remember why you were not enthusiastically agreeing to let him do that. 

Then he stops, and you’re whining before you remember yourself and growl instead. He presses his lips to yours before you can really think about it, and there’s a faint taste of something different in his tongue. You dig your claws into his thighs when you realize what that taste _is_. And somewhere between kissing him breathless and writhing with sheer mortification, he’s straddling your hips and the tip of your bulge is squirming up against the familiar wetness of his nook. 

“Don’t think that chair’s gonna withstand this,” he says, in that low, smug tone of his that always coils straight in your groin, and you just came, but you want him all the same. 

“Fuck the chair,” you hiss up against his left fin, wrapping your arms against his back, “I’ll just fuck you on the floor if it breaks.” 

And you were joking, you really were. You make terrible jokes during sex because that’s the only way you know how to handle this. Sollux always laughs and ignores them, but Eridan isn’t Sollux, will never be Sollux. Eridan takes your little jokes for promises and writhes with want because you’re afraid Eridan might let you do anything you want. 

“Promise?” He asks, voice gone all shivery and breathless, and you don’t know what to say, how to explain yourself. 

So you dig in your claws and pull him down, shoving your bulge as far deep as it’ll go. Eridan keens and it’s the fucking loveliest sound you’ve ever heard. 

**II.**

There’s something curled up deep in your pan, feral and instinctive, that keeps telling you this is a bad idea. A tiny kernel that eons of evolution haven’t been able to clear out of your head. Water is bad. Terrifying things lurk in the water. You should never, ever let the water close up on you. On the other hand, this is nice. The water is pleasantly cool and Eridan’s hands on your thighs are reassuring. Sitting in his lap as you are, you can feel the small push of water as it passes through his gills as well as the muscles contracting and expanding. He doesn’t say anything, because he hasn’t figured out what to say to make it better, but he can touch you and help you fight the fear of drowning. 

“So I’m thinking,” you say, slow and quiet, as the hands on your body start to explore, “if you keep doing that,” _that_ being the fingers teasing the skin where thigh meets groin, “and you will, because you’re a pan-rotten insatiable _disaster_ , does that mean you’re gonna breathe the aftermath?” The hands still all of a sudden. You grin. “Because that’s kind of fucking kinky. Then again, it’s not like you don’t like rolling in i—eep!” 

You hoot a laugh as he stands up, carrying you with him, and give him a devious grin as he sits you on the edge of the cleansing bowl cabinet. 

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Eridan says, even though he’s busy kissing and biting on your collar bones. 

“Fuck you,” you laugh, pressing your knees against his sides, just below his gills, and squeezing until he gasps, “I have the nicest things.” You wrap your hands at the base of his horns, as if to prove your point, and then twist as he shivers and gasps. “See?” 

“I’m going to lie in my coon, Kar,” but for all he’s bitching, his fingers are tracing along the slit of your nook and the sheath of your bulge, “staring at the ceiling and thinking about that.” 

“You fucking love me, don’t even start,” you say, playful, but maybe there was something in your tone or your grip on his horns that wasn’t right, because Eridan drops the teasing in a heartbeat. 

“Always,” he promises, and for a moment, just before he leans in to kiss you, he looks vulnerable and fragile and decidedly the most pitiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life. 

“Well good,” you scoff, shifting until you’ve got your limbs wrapped around him, holding him close. “Maybe then you’ll spend some goddamn time thinking about me too, in your daily contemplation of breathing fucking slurry.” 

The flood of pleasure in your veins is both, from the rueful laughter you manage to coax out of him, and from the way he curls his tongue with the tip of your bulge. You’ll never get tired of that, you think, no matter how many sweeps go by. Still, it’s not his mouth you want, for all his mouth is fucking _gorgeous_. So you nudge him a little, with the hand on his hair and the foot by his side. You nudge him until he’s let go of you and until he’s sitting back on the floor, not even trying to hide the way his bulge’s coiling on itself. 

“You know what’s the best part of being a landdweller?” You ask, as you slide down the cabinet and nudge him further back as you slide down to kneel between his legs. “Breathing slurry has never been a concern.” 

“Fu—“ 

But he never finishes the sentence, not when you slam into him without remorse. And then he’s beautiful like this, gasping for air, clawing the floor and arching up to take you in as far as you’ll go. 

The best part of being you, really, is the way he hugs you close and whines desperately against your ear until he can’t string together a coherent sentence to save his life. 

**III.**

You look at him and you want to free him. The way the leather straps pull at his limbs can’t possibly be comfortable and the way he’s tied to the platform has to be killing his back. And yet, he likes it. He’s told you so, and you _believed_ him when he told you so. It was easy to believe it then, when you were sitting down, having dinner and having terribly awkward conversations about sex. Though maybe the only one feeling awkward about it was you. It’s very different now, because even if you’re intellectually aware of how much he wants this, your eyes register the unnatural pull of the restraints and your body flinches with sympathy. All you see is pain, pain which you’re going to make worse, with the knife you’re holding in a sweaty palm, and which try as you might cannot entirely understand as pleasure. 

You trail a hand down his spine, claws light and gentle, and he shivers and tugs on his restrains. You wish he weren’t gagged. You wish you hadn’t put the gag on him. You wish he hadn’t brought you the gag and told you how to put it on him and how much he’d like it if you did. You wish he could talk and tell you how it’s okay, and it’s so _stupid_ because he’s bound and gagged and at your mercy, and you’re the one that desperately needs comfort. You’re the one that needs soft, cooing words to guide you through the whole thing. 

He’s bound and gagged and at your mercy, and until he drops the bell in his hand, you can do with him whatever you want, but all you really want is to hold him and cry and hide under his skin. Instead, you take another breath and test the edge of the blade against his spine. You notice his bulge, writhing and dripping lubrication already, only because the sound he makes forces you to drop your eyes in shame. The knife is sharp and cuts easily through skin. It’s light, at first. Tiny surface cuts, no deeper than ones from paper, that will sting and almost never bleed. You try to be methodical about it, to maybe establish a pattern and force yourself to go through it, but the _sounds_ he makes. 

You press a little harder, just a little deeper, and the gag does nothing to muffle his trills. You work slowly, tentatively, crisscrossing his back with lines of blood and expecting the bell to fall. You strain your ears, but you never hear it. You understand the gag, once you start cutting around his gills – never too close, and but the rings are smeared in violet and he trusts you so much you feel you’re about to implode – once the blood really gets going and it’s dripping onto the floor and nearly overshadowing the sound of his own lubrication hitting the inside of the pail. He’s wet everywhere and your back burns as you imagine the pain of each cut, but he’s flushed against the gag, eyes nearly rolled back, and you can see his nook spasming against air, desperately inviting something in, while his bulge lashes against the edge and that too has to be painful, something so hard and unyielding against the tender underside. 

You don’t know when, exactly, but your pants are ruined, uncomfortably sticking to your thighs because you’re so aroused you don’t even dare trying to pull them off. Air itself could set you off. You look at him and he’s so desperately gone, completely given to the sensations you’re giving them and your pan keeps screeching about pain but the expression on his face says _no, no, just the sweetest pleasure, just the nicest things_. You need him to come. You need to shove him off the edge, because you’re so close you don’t know what will happen if you go first. 

You drop the knife and reach out to lick up the blood right at the center of his back, on a hunch more than anything else. He convulses under your lips, as you stretch your body to cover his. You’re still tucked deep into your pants, covered in layers and layers of fabric and nowhere near touching his junk or yours, but you’ve never felt closer to him, than in that moment, riding his orgasm with your own. 

**IV.**

You hate that he’s taller than you and always so fucking apologetic about it, but if he weren’t taller than you he wouldn’t look so damn nice clawing the wall like this. He looks almost as nice as he feels; the temperature difference between you making you pay attention to details beyond the way his nook spasms around you. Between that and the sounds he makes, you know you won’t be lasting long now. You still your hips, buried into him as far as you’ll go, and concentrate as much as possible in lashing the far wall of his nook. You drag your claws up his thighs, not really aware of how hard you’re digging them in, but it must have been hard enough because that’s all it takes. Eridan arches his back in a way that makes you wonder if his bones are made of rubber, shrieking out in a pitch you’ve learned to recognize as mindless pleasure instead of something more alarming. 

You keep on moving, even as he drips a mess against your groin, because you’re close enough but not yet. You can already feel the heady, pleasant bubbling in your nerves as arousal spreads throughout your body, tingling across every inch of skin in preparation for it. And then you feel your insides lurch, tugging at your very bones and the world caves in as you spill your release between your legs. Eridan clenches and shivers, and you wonder what makes him react that way, but you’re not sure you want to ask him. He might actually tell you. 

You ride the lazy ebb of pleasure as nerves put out wave after wave of sensation informing your thinkpan that, miraculously, it does not suck to be you at the moment. In fact, being you might be the most amazing thing there is, right now. You slump bonelessly on Eridan’s back, breathing harshly as you squeeze up to the last bit of enjoyment out of the moment. Eridan doesn’t even seem to feel your added weight, though he moans as your bulge begins to fold back into itself. You kind of wish you could just stay there forever, but you’re not Eridan and your skeleton is made of bones covered in muscles instead of foam and gel, so you don’t handle the whole liquefied thing well, and as soon as your breathing is even enough, you’re pulling back to stand on unsteady feet. Eridan makes a sound of protest that worms itself deep between your legs, but you ignore it, much like you ignore the periodic throbbing in your groin or the way your pulse spikes when you take one good look at him. 

God, he’s a mess. 

He’s leaning all his weight onto the wall in a way that can’t be comfortable for his joints or his spine or his anything, and you can see the tiny shudders tugging at the opecular flaps, quietly making the rings twitch. He’s got the ghost of your claws all over his skin and there are ten bleeding lines along his thighs, five on each. As far as sex goes, it’s not so bad. He likes to joke and tease you, that so long as there’s more genetic material than blood involved, he probably won’t be dying of this, but you don’t find the joke funny. You have an awkward relationship with Eridan and Pain, which is entirely different from your relationship with Eridan himself or your relationship with Pain. Because you don’t like hurting your matesprit, not really. You’re still a stupid, immature wiggler at heart and you know you’d drop everything for his sake, just to keep him safe. But you can’t keep him safe from _this_ , because this is part of him. This is as much Eridan as his fins or his glasses or his ridiculous habit to dot his i’s with smilies when he’s in a good mood. You don’t understand it, because your pan isn’t wired to mix pleasure and pain the way his does, but you can deal with it. 

“C’mon,” you say, trailing a loving hand up his spine, before wrapping an arm around his waist, “let’s sort your fucking hopeless ass out.” 

_This_ is what he gives you, in exchange for the pain you can bring yourself to offer him. When he’s quiet and docile and still not entirely _there_ , afterwards. He takes all the pain you’re willing to dish out and in return bares himself at his most vulnerable to you. He sits through the cleaning and the fussing and the dressing of all his hurts, and not a sound of protest is made, not a single joke cracked. Sometimes he cries, even, and clings to you and tells you how much he loves you. 

You wonder if his thing with pain is comparable to your thing for this, only you can’t help but feel yours is worse, somehow. You wonder if it’s okay or if you’re just taking advantage of him. You don’t really like to hurt him, but you like him sated and docile afterwards, looking at you through glassy eyes like you’re the beginning and the end of his world. 

You wonder if there’s something wrong with you, but then he’ll smile at you and you’ll lose the train of thought along with your breath. 

**V.**

“I’m sorry.” 

Privately, you’re always taken aback by the level of submissiveness Eridan is capable of when properly chastised. You watch him lurk about your doorway, fins dropped and expression contrite, and if you’re honest with yourself, you don’t really remember what started the fight in the first place. All you remember is losing your temper and storming away after a few choice snarls. It’s always the same, though. You fight and he meets you halfway first, but afterwards he’s always the first one to make amends. You want to be irritated by the way he looks at you, the way he slouches closer and comes kneel at your feet, resting his chin on your knee, but you can’t quite be. It’s overblown groveling, you tell yourself, because Eridan is melodramatic and overblown by nature. Everything is a production with him. 

“I’m sorry too,” you say, though you don’t really remember what you should even be sorry for. It’s just the way he looks at you, so earnest and more than a little desperate, that makes you wish you had a better way to soothe him, to make him understand everything okay. You run your claws through his hair, parting the violet strands with your hands, “I hate it when we fight.” 

“I’m so sorry,” he says, melting under your touch. 

You know how it goes, by now. He’ll apologize and you’ll apologize and after some more awkward tug-o-war for the guilt, you’re gonna end up fucking him on the floor. He’ll ask you for the knife, right there or maybe a little later, but soon either way. He’s going to beg you to hurt him and you’re going to do it because even if you don’t understand it, you want him happy. You hate the way his blood crusts under your claws, but it’s a small price to pay for the strangely sated smiles and the content purring after you’re done. 

The thought occurs to you, like it has before. A certain, nagging, insidious thought. Sollux put it there with an offhand remark, but you don’t know if it was accidental or not. You don’t know what he’d get out if, except you can’t stop thinking about it and it’s been _perigees_. 

As Eridan tilts his head up, eyes half lidded and expression docile, you know he’s aiming for a kiss. The thought twists in your pan. You have your fingers in his hair still, right behind the bases of his horns, and when you clench your hand he goes rigid in your grasp, eyes widening. He’s two breaths away from you, mouth parted slightly and eyes searching, frantic. For one second he’s terrified of you, utterly and completely, and then he surrenders. Something inside you throbs, as you watch. You can tell precisely the moment he’s given into you, to anything you want. 

“I,” you begin, struggle, panic, tremble. You swallow hard and look at him in the eye. “I want your mouth,” you say, stumbling over the words, tongue twisting awkwardly against your teeth. You try your best to make it a demand, but don’t quite hit the mark. “On my nook.” 

You watch Eridan unravel, falling to pieces at your feet for you to rearrange to your liking. By the time he’s got his tongue up your nook, you’ve fallen in love with him all over again, and you don’t even understand how or why. All that matters is the frenzy of his lips and the way he cants your hips up a notch when you come, just so you’ll make an even bigger mess of him. You’re scared, for him and of yourself, and even so the satisfaction rushing in your veins is not just about the orgasm he just gave you. There’s something about his forehead pressed into your hipbone and his cheek resting against your writhing bulge and the soft, sated sigh behind his lips. You finger his hair, roll your hips and brace yourself for the inevitable. 

You’re going to have to _talk_ about this. 

But not yet. Not right now. 

Right now he’s on his hands and knees and you’re going to fuck him like it’ll somehow make everything alright. Right now you’re going to dig your claws into his skin every time he tightens his grip around your bulge, and wallow in every little whimper you can drag out of his throat. Right now you’re frankly too busy to talk and open yet another can of worms, when this relationship is in itself a can of worms. 

**VI.**

He’s always like this, after you come back from the _Dream Chaser_ or the _Messiah_. You ignore the fact that you miss him just as keenly when he’s off tormenting the crew of the _Morrigan_ , but, you tell yourself, at least you refrain from getting in the way of his job. 

“I need to finish this,” you say, leaning over the desk to scowl darkly at the screen. 

He makes a thoughtful sound which a less informed moron might take for agreement, but you’re Karkat fucking Vantas and you weren’t hatched yesterday. You make a warning sound in the back of your throat as he comes sit on the arm of your chair, tilting it just slightly off balance. 

“Eridan—” 

“Not doing anything,” he mutters, draping himself on your back, and you hate him and yourself because it feels so _good_. 

“I swear to god—” 

“Just do your work, Kar,” he says, and if you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t recognize the tiniest hint of smugness in his voice. 

You brace yourself, determined to ignore him until you’ve gotten through the latest batch of reports, but you spend nearly a full minute staring at the same word without anything happening. Then you start reading again, still tentative, still expecting him to pounce. His posture can’t be comfortable, but you’ve made peace with Eridan and his tendency to flop his limbs in the worst possible way. So you go on reading, slowly, ever so slowly, getting back into the rhythm of it. At some point he wraps an arm around your waist and you nearly jump out of your skin, but all he does is drape himself more comfortably on you. So you go back to reading and work and the million things that demand your attention and aren’t him. You know, deep down, that he’s going to pull something off, by virtue of being him, but the more you wait the more you forget to keep up your guard. 

You’re so concentrated; you don’t feel the first kiss pressing against your left horn. Or the second. Only the third, with the barest hint of tongue and teeth, jerks you out of your thoughts. You stare blankly at the screen, tempted to try and mock-gore him for his trouble. While you’re deciding whether to ignore him or yell at him, he starts slurping loudly and you realize he’s not just kissing your horn, he’s mouthing it like he mouths your bulge. Which coincidentally is causing everything south of your waist to take sudden interest. 

“ _Eridan_.” 

He doesn’t stop, instead, he licks along the curve of your horn, crossing from the near insensate ring to that bit where every single nerve ending is clustered together. Fuck your blood and your fucking mutation, even your horns are _wrong_. For most trolls the bases are the most sensitive, especially where the bands go from red to orange. For you, it’s the tips that drive you crazy. You close your eyes for a moment, ignoring the rain of sparks down your back or the way he’s half-coiling his tongue around your horn. 

“I’m working,” you say, hoarsely, like it means anything, but the truth is that you’re just holding yourself still because if you move he might stop. 

He doesn’t. He licks and kisses and slurps and just when your vision’s starting to blur, he slows down. 

“ _This_ is working?” He teases, breathing the words against the base of your horn, and you don’t know what he means exactly, until his fingers tangle with yours and you realize you have a hand between your legs, rubbing furiously against your groin. “Fuck, that’s some memo I missed.” 

“That’s not—” 

He scrapes his teeth against your horn. The vibrations cascade down your spine and flood your veins with euphoria. You make a choked, muted sound as orgasm steals away your breath, leaving you a wrecked, trembling, wet mess. 

“I’ll fucking kill you,” you say, panting hard for every mouthful of air, even as he laughs quietly against the back of your head. “I will—” 

“Love you too, Kar.” 

You don’t kiss him so much as throw yourself at him, knowing he’ll take you, every piece of you, no matter what. Your fingers find his nook wet and waiting, and you could spend hours caressing him inside out, watching him ride your hand the same way he likes to ride your bulge. But it’s been a while, and it’s so _nice_ to be home. 

And there’s nothing like fucking your matesprit to incoherency to make you feel at home. 

**VII.**

It’s a big thing, you think. You’re not even sure why it occurred to you, but now you’re here, sitting on his hip and studying the slow rise and fall of his chest and the little twitches along his gills. 

“You sure?” You ask, more for the sake of asking than any real doubt. He’s boneless and sated beneath you, giving you looks that are both expectant and tentative. 

“Well,” he drawls, and you love it so much when he drawls, all puffed up arrogance and empty posturing. You love it so much you wonder if you should hate yourself for it, or if you would hate yourself for it, if you knew what it meant. “You could just fuck me again,” he says, grinning lazily, and you almost want to. “I mean, if I’m not relaxed enough for you.” 

“God, shut up,” you snap, ignoring the flush on your cheeks – sweeps, how many fucking _sweeps_ , and you still blush at the stupidest things when you’re alone with him, “just… lie back.” 

You try to resist the urge to manhandle him, because you know that if you touch him too much you’re just going to get carried away. Procrastinate a little longer on this, even though you want it and _he_ wants it, and why is everything always so fucking complicated all the time? 

“Spread my legs and think of the Empire?” 

You slap him for that one, lightly enough, palm wide open, right against his side. He clenches and his entire body ripples, because you know he was expecting you to hit him right in the gills. You’re always scared you’re gonna hit him too hard. It’s not like he’s delicate, but when he puts himself at your mercy like this, you always feel brutish and clumsy. You keep waiting for the day of enlightenment, when you wake up and realize how much pain is good pain and how much is too much. You keep expecting the line to become obvious and glaring out of sheer familiarity, but it’s like tracing doodles in sand, always shifting, never quite the same place you’d expect it to be. 

“Keep it up and I’ll put this,” you say, mock-snarling as you wave the needle about, “through your bulge instead!” 

You expect him to laugh. Or squeak. Or tease. You don’t know why you keep having expectations about him when he’s made a lifelong career of upturning each and every one you’ve ever had. 

“You could,” he says, sober and quiet and intense, and you struggle to read if he’s offering or testing or _what_. “If you want, I mean. It’s doable.” 

You feel the floor drop under your feet, except you think the floor’s been dropping for decades now, and you’ve been free-falling for so long you forget. At least until he does or says something like that, giving you that look of hopeless surrender, and you remember that yeah, your feet don’t know the feel of solid ground under them anymore. 

“Shut up,” you whisper around the thickness in your throat, placing a hand on his side, fingers spread and holding the flaps of skin loose and open. 

“I love you,” he says, and he’s all the more vulnerable for his tone, than the fact you can see his insides move underneath the opecula. 

You take a deep breath. 

“I know,” you say, and push the needle through. 

The scream drills its way straight to your groin, and even though you’re spent and sated and done, you feel your insides churn and twist with want. Maybe, just maybe, you’re beginning to understand, but you don’t stop to contemplate it. You reach out to place the ring, telling yourself you need to do this properly, following each step, lest you fuck up something. But Eridan’s a puddle of liquefied troll under your hands, and you wonder if every troll how’s put a needle to his gills has seen this, the way his eyes are unfocused and his jaw slack. You almost choke on the sudden wave of jealousy, and the sour taste doesn’t leave your mouth until you’ve shoved your bulge into him again. He’s still a ragdoll, so far off in that strange headspace he gets into, when you hurt him enough. You fuck him harshly, claws digging into his skin and bulge lashing almost brutally against the furthest wall of his nook. Tiny, breathless sobs wreck his frame beneath you, but he doesn’t do more than whimper and take all you dish out. It’s almost the same dreamily quality than when you’re patching him up afterwards, except he’s still twitching around you, nook clenching and relaxing rhythmically until you shift just enough for the next strike to hit his seedflap. 

And then he’s falling apart with a scream, shattered inside out, and you love him so much he could burst into a thousand pieces and you’d still figure out how to put him back together. 

**VIII.**

“If you ask me if I’m sure one more time, I swear to god I will claw your fucking eyes out.” 

Eridan laughs a little weakly at that, slightly too high pitched, and reaches to pull your legs further up. You hold your knees and pull back, shivering as the posture forces your nook to spread a little. He’s shaking as much as you wish you could, staring intently and swallowing hard. He’s scared of hurting you, but not nearly as much as you’re scared his bulge just won’t _fit_. You never really questioned it, because that’s how it works, for any couple that’s more than two feet of height apart. Eridan has more than three on you. It’s just how it works, and it’s wildly accepted to avoid unnecessary pain and potential injury, and it’s quite possibly the only thing about your matespritship that’s what anyone would consider _normal_. He’s certainly never minded at all. 

It’s not like you’ve ever minded, either. 

Your sexlife has learned to accommodate a few strange things, since Eridan entered it, but that doesn’t mean you’re _complaining_. You love fucking him into a puddle of purring content and he always makes you happy, one way or another. It’s just this… idea you got. You want to blame Sollux for it, purely because Sollux is _always_ to blame for everything, the hateful douche. But you just realized one day, that Eridan’s bulge is the size of your fucking _forearm_. And the thought made your breath ragged and your insides twitch, because surely you couldn’t do _that_. You thought about it, though. You thought about it a lot. And in thinking about it, you researched about it, and your kismesis, being your _kismesis,_ dutifully helped with that. You know Eridan knows a thing or two about this, but you wanted to think about it on your own, and make up your mind, before you let him know you two might share a kink. And when you did tell him, you were expecting him to be excited, not terrified. His reaction was equal parts breathless enthusiasm and wide-eyed terror. It took you a moment to understand why, and then you felt silly for not having thought of it first. 

For Eridan, this is just an extension of his thing for pain. He likes pain. He likes pain like no one you’ve ever known. He’ll lay back and take all the pain you deign to give him and love you all the more for it. But the idea of hurting you terrifies him. More so because you’re not in this for the pain, really, but rather the idea of being pushed to the limit and how your body would react to it, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ve waited this long to bring it up because the pain intimidates you a little. You talked about it, though. Because Eridan always wants to _talk_ about it, but now that it’s time, you want him to stop looking at you like you might back out, because you _might_ back out. 

You take another slow breath and nod at him, summarily refusing to run away. You were expecting the temperature shock, when the tip of his bulge presses against your nook, but either because you’re fretting like a pro or because you’ve never been this hyper attentive about it, the feeling drags a gasp out of you. Eridan pulls back immediately, though, and the growl worming its way out of your throat is sincere. 

“I’m—“ 

“Stop apologizing,” you snap, and you feel a little ridiculous, sprawled back on the concupiscent platform, legs spread as far as they’ll go and nook gaping almost impatiently. “When it hurts, I’ll _tell_ you it hurts.” 

“Right, right,” Eridan says, more to himself than to you, you think, and you wonder how anxious he really is. He runs his hands over your thighs, absently gnawing on his lower lip. “Just… okay.” 

“I trust you,” you say, hoping to be reassuring, but he whimpers like you’re tearing off a piece of his soul. 

You moan encouragingly, as the first few inches slide in, and it’s not that different, really, from your fingers or your toys or Sollux’s touch. You should probably stop thinking about your kismesis while your matesprit’s slowly working his way into fucking you, but it’s not like you’ve ever had anyone else inside you and something in your pan finds the novelty ridiculously arousing. Eridan’s panting softly as he sinks in deeper, digging his fingers – not his claws, not yet – into your thighs, shaking with effort to go slow. Your nook stretches out to accommodate him, and it’s just the same as any other time you’ve had something inside you, really, except it doesn’t _stop_. You arch back with a wanton sound, when you feel the tip of Eridan’s bulge brushing against your seedflap, but he’s still more out than in. The lips of your nook start to itch as they’re forced open more and more, and the walls grow tenser and tenser the more you take. The discomfort grows steadily as you feel his bulge shift, curling around itself to fit, and you look down, certain you must be bloated and swollen, but it doesn’t really show. All you see are those last few inches you still have to take, even though your body keeps telling you it _can’t_ , and your own bulge coiled in desperate knots, as if that alone could make you forget everything else. 

Your nook burns not quite painfully as you feel Eridan come to a stop, trembling above you. It’s not really pleasurable, the way he’s forcing you wide open like that, and it’s certainly not comfortable, but it doesn’t really hurt either. What keeps your bulge writhing between your legs is the fact you can feel your walls pulsing in time with your heartbeat. That you can’t clench, no matter how much you try, because there’s just not enough space. The feeling that if he moves, even just a tiny bit, you’re going to tear and burst and _break_. You’re wondering what will happen, when your seedflap distends and your genetic material rushes out, with nowhere to go, when Eridan shifts inside you and the world whites out. 

Climax is a drawn out, frame-by-frame experience, full of disjointed sensations and sounds, because you’re not entirely there for half of it. You come once because you’re so fucking _full_ , and the way Eridan shifts and tries to find an angle to lash inside you makes it evident there just isn’t any space for him to do it. You imagine your muscles pulled taunt and at their limit, and reach down to touch your belly, to try and see if you can feel the pressure that rocks your world off center. Then you come again when Eridan slips out and you’re not so much empty as _hollowed out_. You can’t really put it to words, but if you had to guess, you’d say you just went to that same dreamy headspace Eridan visits when you slice him with a knife. It’s terrifying and exciting, and you don’t know if you could handle going there again, but you think you might want to try anyway. 

“That was beautiful, Kar, fucking poetry.” 

You come to your senses in Eridan’s arms, with his hands petting lovingly on every inch of skin they can reach and his voice curling teasingly against your ear. You want to shove him off and splutter at the things he tells you, which are all the things he couldn’t even say when you had him so far up inside him you stole away his _voice_ , but at the same time you want to curl up and purr in content precisely because of them. Because yes, you took him in, all the way in, and you weren’t tight so much as _full_ , and if he really did like it so much, then this might not have been a one-time deal. You ache all the way to the core, but it’s a very satisfied feeling, almost smug. You pushed your body way past what it seemed possible, and it didn't break. Quite the contrary, in fact. You feel strangely powerful in a way you can’t quite explain, and it overrides the exhaustion and the throbbing in your groin. 

As far as experimenting goes, you think, that was pretty much a success, so you content yourself with purring in your matesprit's arms and wondering if you can nudge him into making you a cup of tea without having to endure half an hour of bitching about it. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Askblog for this verse.](http://requisitionforms.tumblr.com/)


End file.
